Page 6

IRIS

Remington Azrid’s dark magic reverses night and day. All light disappears from the office as his shadows unfurl like ribbons of ink.

They’d be hauntingly pretty if they weren’t rearing and ready to fight me like thousands of spider arms.

Great.

The Sentinel’s reaction explains the dread that’s made every step up the stairs feel like a slog through a bog.

My new boss is a pit of silent suffering.

“Major?” I ask softly and reach out a tentative thread. “Are you in there?”

An icy wisp of his soul surprises me in the dark.

Our silks barely brush—just bump for half a breath.

Pain sears through the hazy connection, shriveling my throat.

I wrench away and grab my windpipe.

His pain burns like swallowing a half-forged sword.

How is he still standing?

I’ve been holding my soul-silks back on a Vhex embargo. Faced with another wounded beast that only I can heal, they bust out, all giddy for the chance to help. “I’m here. Do you want guiding?”

In the shadows, something metal clanks to the floor. Then dark ribbons part, revealing just enough to stop my heart.

Remington’s fingers lengthen to onyx claws. His hair bleaches from black to silver, and his pupils blow out until only the thinnest ring of crimson edges the hypnotic blackness.

His fangs lengthen, wicked and sharp.

A chill rolls down my back.

The man isn’t home.

The monster is in control.

“ Drink .” His voice sticks to my skin, all scratchy and liquid warm—hot honey with the bees left inside.

There’s a buzz in my head.

Then a blur.

A bang.

A flash of pain.

In the space of a blink, I’m spread across Remington’s desk and his teeth are pumping my throat.

It happens so fast that I skip past shock.

Straight to pleasure.

Every suck of his mouth pumps between my legs as he hungrily tugs at my soul.

He strokes my neck with long, clawed fingers and grinds his heavy cock between my spreading thighs.

Oh, fuck .

It’s so good.

Remington Azrid is made of blood and shadow.

His thirst is blinding, but past his out-of-control instinct to feed, I fall head-first into his flickering delight.

It’s beyond want.

Beyond like.

His primal hunger rips the bottom out of my stomach.

So does his tongue, lapping between his sucking fangs.

Remington needs to devour me.

Now, I kind of want to let him.

As he takes my blood into his body, Remington opens to my soul-silks. Our souls thread together like they’ve always been one.

The first peek inside Remington feels like shining a flashlight into a chasm. He’s cold, bottomless, and so choked with tangled shadows that I’m going to need a psychic blowtorch to find the root of his damage.

Give me enough time, and I promise I’ll find a way to fish his humanity out of the dark.

But I’ll never survive that long if Remington sucks off gallons of my blood.

Guides heal fast, but not that fast.

“Enough.” Head spinning, I try to nudge him off my throat, but my fingers are hooked in his belt.

How did that happen?

I blink, and by the time my lids lift, I’ve lost the plot again.

Remington’s weight is gone. Our silks ripped apart.

I reel, empty and dizzy-confused.

There’s a much louder bang , followed by clanging, crashing, and a chorus of beastly snarls.

It takes a minute to breathe past the whiplash. I ease upright on Remington’s desk, applying pressure to the holes in my throat.

His fourth-floor office is missing a wall.

What’s left is on fire.

Just like my plans of being a normal, hardworking Guide.

I must’ve lost a dangerous amount of blood, because I can’t feel the raging magic until I teeter to the smoking edge of the building.

Vhex floats on wings of fire.

In fully exploded, rampaging devil-mode, he’s pink-skinned, red-eyed, and made of horn-to-toe lightning and hellfire.

I can’t see Remington, but he’s definitely alive.

His shadowy energy seethes deep inside the volcanic crater sunk into what used to be the base’s lawn.

The grass is burnt to ash.

If someone doesn’t stop Vhex, the building is going down next.

I sway as Vhex fights the shadows. Inky, black-and-purple tentacles twist around him, strong enough to go head-to-head against the hellfire.

Remington rises from the lawn volcano, wrapped in a cocoon of shadows. As the darkness unravels, leather wings unfold from his back. He hovers in a patch of personal midnight—a dark god with black-marbled veins, pointed ears, and bladed claws.

My heart thumps, recognizing the danger.

But my stupid power sparkles .

Oh no.

Guess who has to fuck the vampire until he’s human again?

Remington’s gaze snaps to my bloody throat.

The air around him ripples, but before he can fulfill the dark promise burning in his coal-black eyes, Vhex roars, “MY GUIDE.”

He launches himself at the rampaging commander.

The clash of their S-class magic kicks up a brain-piercing whine.

Scions of the four ducal families are a special breed.

Supreme bloodlines mean supreme power—up to and sometimes beyond the limit of what a human body can handle.

I’m S-class and used to dealing with a morphed-out lich. If I’m struggling with the blowback from their high-class magic, everyone else on base will be fried.

I grab a scrap from Remington’s ripped-away curtains and wrap my neck to slow the ooze of blood.

If I can’t tame these monsters, no one else has a chance.

This is what I get for wanting to help.

But I survived Kyorgos, and I’ve learned from my mistakes.

I can handle Azrid and Trezzoran.

Even if I have to handle them both at once.

The Sentinels rampage across the wrecked lawn. Snarling, they pinball along the perimeter wall, leaving behind a melted, crumbled ruin.

Remington snags Vhex’s wings and shot-put-tosses him through the wall. Vhex’s body goes poof , blasting another hole in our defense.

The “commander” isn’t human enough to care.

Without wasting a breath, Remington flashes toward me, pumping his wings and salivating with vampiric hunger.

Vhex reacts before I can.

Still half-buried in melting stones, he launches a ball of hellfire.

Remington takes the hit through his wings and craters somewhere around the second floor. The building shakes.

I scramble away from the edge.

This has to stop.

We’re doomed if the real monsters swarm.

A pink devil staggers out of a rubble pile, cocking his arm to launch another fireball.

If I were really HIS GUIDE, Vhex would’ve looked for me first. Instead, he lines a shot at his nemesis with zero worry I’ll be torched in the crossfire.

It’s all the reality check I need.

Just do the job and don’t get swept up in their shit.

“Vhex,” I call, firm but sweet. “Come here.”

Abandoning his half-formed fireball, he leaps four stories to reach me in a flash.

I’ve been taken by surprise enough times today that I’m finally prepared. Before Vhex can touch me, kiss me, or tempt me with any more his deluded-possessive poison, I launch my silks.

Meeting his crackling pain sets my brain on fire, but I grit my teeth and lean in to the heat.

I have to chill him out. “Vhex. Relax.”

Not holding anything back, even though I should , I twine our soul fibers and try to let him feel my confidence. “I can fix you.”

With my universal compatibility and Vhex’s high-spec power, the instant soulmate bond is so nearly fucking perfect, I have to clench my abs to stop a moan.

Vhex shudders. His flames disappear into his rich, raspberry-tinted skin.

There’s a lot more skin than before.

After his latest hellfire tantrum, Vhex is left with a disintegrating dagger harness strapped to his ribs and a smudge of ash that used to be pants.

No boots.

No boxers.

Not even a tube sock.

In mostly devil mode, Vhex is red everywhere except for the bubblegum pink shaft of his proudly bobbing cock.

It’s covered in textured knobs like lickable candy buttons.

Tempting.

So is the fin-shaped— rib? attachment? mini-dick? —that I can’t check out while it’s hidden behind the thick main event.

Whatever that thing is?

It looks like a good time.

But now is not my turn to test the ride.

Remington’s roar shakes the building.

“Kneel for me,” I murmur, wrapping Vhex’s silks.

He drops at my feet.

The change in positions isn’t as helpful as I hoped—his raw cock rubs against my leg.

I lock my feet and cup his jaw.

Every Sentinel has different needs, but guiding follows the same steps, whether you’re holding hands or body-to-body.

First, you join your silks to form the spiritual connection. After that, checking a Sentinel’s damage and doing the fix usually only takes a few seconds.

But then I met these dukes…

Vhex is a smoking mess of chaos so wild I don’t know where to start.

My fingers twitch.

Instead of screaming, I pat his velvet horn. “I’ll do what I can to help you for now.”

A glance won’t be enough.

Fixing Vhex will take me a fucking lifetime .

I can only start from the basics.

I’ll untangle the tips of Vhex’s silks. Then I’ll work my way down, straightening and soothing his power to clear a path into his meridians—the veins where magic flows. Once I start freeing knots and cleansing toxins, Vhex’s head should clear.

Then I can ask him how he fell this far and what the fuck is that thing rubbing against my leg?

Great plan.

Also, doomed from the start.

Vhex’s soul itself is too damaged.

His silks are pitted and charred. Even his meridians have been baked in hellfire.

No wonder he’s suffering.

I stroke his jaw and send him all my softness. “I’ve got you now.”

Vhex’s silks squeeze tighter.

I stop myself from squeezing back.

It’s too dangerous, letting those emotions snowball. The more Vhex bares, the more I want to give him in return.

I’ve already fallen off that cliff.

I’m not doing it again.

Trying to be a machine, I work through Vhex’s soul. With some Sentinels, the process is as easy as rolling a ball of yarn. Guiding Kevan always felt more like sorting ice blocks.